- Scrum Method - Roger Vernon Images
Once the basics of scrum are understood and applied, smaller teams with effective managers will see an increase in productivity, quality and morale. As teams grow and the desire to build upon the successes expands, the challenges increase. This article will address some of those challenges, while also outlining a path to extending agile within an organization.
Enterprise Agile Culture
One of the keys to a successful agile culture within a larger organization is realizing the importance of cultural change. Ken Schwaber, one of the creators of scrum, uses the term "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" to point out the importance of fundamental cultural changes for organizations striving to be agile.
Developing an effective agile culture means developing a culture where collaboration and the desire to make a contribution to the teams success are highly valued. For this kind of culture to truly be successful, it needs to be embraced by all parts of the organization from sales and their customers, to the members of the engineering team.
Having a truly collaborative and cultivating culture is not something that will be immediately accepted or embraced. Organizations that are seeking to make fundamental changes to their culture have found it value in the creation of a small team within the organization; this team can take the lead. Once that team can show successes, they can act as evangelists to other teams, allowing the culture to permeate throughout the organization.
Changing the culture of an organization also requires buy-in from senior management who can sponsor the first trial teams. Without some sponsorship from the top and at least one successful team; changing the underlying culture will be extremely difficult.
Project Management Agile Practices
Scaling and governing agile across an enterprise requires some changes in how teams are evaluated. When the first teams begin to use agile practices and start estimating with story points they will develop their own methods for estimating. As more teams get on board, they will each come up with their own, potentially unique, ways of estimating. This can result in entirely different velocities for teams that are actually producing the same amount.
For example, over five iterations, Team A may have an average velocity of 22 story points, while Team B has an average of 44 story points for the same number of iterations. This doesn't necessarily mean that Team B is twice as productive; they may just have a different method for estimating. A good metric then is to measure the increase in velocity for each team over time.
If Team A has steadily increased the story points completed in an iteration and Team B has steadily taken on less, then you can begin to see a trend of improvement. At this point, it's important to look at the underlying reasons why one teams velocity is accelerating while another teams is not. Factors to take into consideration include:
- Quality measures over time. Are the number of unit tests increasing for one team but not the other?
- One team may be using continuous integration in order to reduce integration times and limit risk, while the other is not.
- Have both teams' stories been broken down sufficiently to be accurately estimated?
- Have both teams been left uninterrupted enough to be able to focus on completing their work?
By looking at these and other issues it's possible to contrast teams, focus on obstacles and improve the acceleration of each team's velocity over time.
Enterprise Agile Adoption
Steering a larger organization through the process and cultural changes required for an agile enterprise can be challenging. There needs to be an adoption plan laid out that addresses the strategic, procedural and technological aspects of moving to agile. Each aspect of the plan should follow the same pattern:
- Implement the program gradually by adopting a pilot program comprised of one or two teams.
- Support and internally market the successes of the pilots to draw more support.
- Roll-out successful practices to other teams and build out additional supporting structures.
- Replicate successful practices across the entire organization.
Having a plan upfront will help prevent the first pilot teams from being ignored or worse, absorbed back into the bureaucratic waterfall. Through careful planning, gaining some senior management support, pilot program successes and continuous training and improvement it is possible to gain full enterprise agile adoption.
Roger Vernon - Roger Vernon attended art & film school in Chicago before starting a career in software development. He has managed teams for a wide ...
